Welcome, National Center on Sexual Exploitation, Rights4Girls, and World Without Exploitation
The Jensen Project has awarded additional funding to three more nonprofits via the new Policy category in its GrantTank program, a funding and mentorship opportunity in which nonprofits fighting sex trafficking can collaborate on best practices for the movement, as of September 29, 2023: National Center on Sexual Exploitation, Rights4Girls, and World Without Exploitation. The Jensen Project’s total commitment to funding in 2023 now comes to more than $2 million.
Since its inception, The Jensen Project has supported the Equality Model, partial decriminalization of prostitution with exit services. The Equality Model ensures that traffickers and sex buyers are still held accountable for their crimes, as the demand for sex drives the unwilling supply in the sex trade but releases prostituted people from facing felony charges for their own exploitation. To learn more about the Equality Model and how it can reshape the fight against sex trafficking in America, read this article.
Recently, it came to our attention that there was a vast deficit in funding for Equality Model policy work. For this reason, The Jensen Project announced a new category, Policy, on August 1, 2023, hoping to attract nonprofits working to implement the Equality Model at the State and Federal levels, as well as get closer to the organization’s $2 million annual funding goal. Applications were closed on August 18, 2023.
Although this application reviewing period was short, we had no shortage of phenomenal applicants, making our decision very challenging. We had to consider our current limited resources in a way where we could see the potential of the largest impact.
We received some proposals in the policy category that we ultimately passed on because they were state-specific. The three chosen organizations, however, are working across multiple states and multiple different jurisdictions and have a broader, national scope.
There’s recognition within this space that not one organization can do it all because change is needed on both the state level and the federal level. One of The Jensen Project’s core values is collaboration. Whenever people apply for GrantTank, we like to see that they’re already working with other partners that we have, and we like to see that they’re working with other nonprofits. When we asked, “Who should be at the table?” in the Equality Model discussion, these organizations all named each other. The fact that they were already collaborating was something that we wanted to encourage and maintain.
GrantTank 2023 Recipients – National
On October 6, 2023, The Jensen Project will host its third annual gathering for GrantTank recipients, Cohort ’23, in Irving, Texas. For the first time, 22 GrantTank recipients, the most at one time, will gather to represent four different types of anti-trafficking nonprofits and GrantTank categories: Housing, Economic Empowerment, Technology, and Policy. With so many diverse organizations across eleven states, plus six nationally focused organizations, The Jensen Project is excited to host this melding of minds to support sex trafficking survivor healing and safe exiting of The Life.
About The Jensen Project
Founded by philanthropist and rape survivor, Janet Jensen, The Jensen Project exists to fuel strategic partnerships in the fight against sexual violence. Funding and business resources are provided to mission-aligned organizations on an annual basis through the GrantTank program. Learn more at TheJensenProject.org
